


Your Kingdom Has Turned to a Boneyard

by M3m3mnt0M0r1



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Abusive Parents, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Bad Parenting, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Catharsis, Character Death, Character Study, Crying, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Depressing, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, I think I tagged everything, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Violence, Loss of Parent(s), Mommy Issues, No Dialogue, No Romance, Parent Death, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, Stand Alone, Suicide Attempt, Unhappy Ending, i might add onto it and create a more definite ending, takes place after book three, the ending is up for interpretation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28021908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3m3mnt0M0r1/pseuds/M3m3mnt0M0r1
Summary: After Hel's defeat, Eir reconciles her past with her present.
Relationships: Eir & Hel (Fire Emblem)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Your Kingdom Has Turned to a Boneyard

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for clicking on "Your Kingdom Has Turned to a Boneyard"! Heads up: there is potentially triggering material in the story, including: suicide, death (natural territory in an Eir character study), child abuse, implied/referenced violence, and a general depressing tone. Please be wary of your limits. Now that that's out of the way, enjoy the story!

Eir dangles her feet over the ledge. She blinks her eyes closed, pictures the drop into the chasm. It must be, what, 300 meters? She opens one eye. There's no bottom to be seen--only a swirling fog tinged by moonlight. She opens her other eye, squints, fails to see any shapes beneath the stirring mist. Could rocks hide below? Perhaps a moat? The abyss couldn't go on forever. There was something at its bottom. There had to be. Otherwise, why was she here?

She tucks a hair behind her ear, untucks it, tucks it again. It almost glows beneath the moon, a beacon to anyone else awake at this hour. The Askrans are certainly sleeping, but the other Heroes...that was wishful thinking at best. Whether it be nightmares, flashbacks, or training, at least half the Order is awake at night. This is a distant part of the castle, hidden away from the main halls, but still part of the building; she can still hear the metallic clanking coming from the Training Tower, sense the frenzied energy emitting from the barracks. Any passersby could spot her sitting--alight as a candle in the dark--and approach her, hoping for a quick chat; that's how most Heroes are, and Eir hasn't decided whether she likes it or not. She wishes she had worn a veil. 

The air is warm against her exposed upper chest and shoulders. It raises the blood within her to just below the skin's surface, coloring her pink--still so pale as to be a trick of the light. Does she have blood anymore? The last time she remembers bleeding was (quite literally) several lifetime ago. As Hel had grown weary of her daughter's decreasing responsiveness to gory deaths, she'd turned to cleaner, more efficient murders that took less time. A snapped neck here, a poisoned plant there. The bitter remnants of crushed cherry pits still linger on her tongue. 

Just one more. That's all she has. Countless lives and deaths, whittled down to one. Like marble, she has been chiseled away, bit by bit, to reveal her truest form, the most perfect, the most mortal, the most imperfect. For what is a mortal but wonderfully flawed? So fragile, yet so bold. Brave enough to fight but weak enough to die. How ironic that their weakness built her mother's strength. She built her mother's strength. 

Perhaps she's been weak all along. She was never marble, stiff and unyielding. She was a willow, weighed down by love for her mother. Clay, molded in her mother's hands, thrust into a kiln and cooked alive. A creation meant to further destruction. A pyre of potential, razed and rebuilt. Now she is a monument of misdeeds, a testament to life's durability.

Every now and then, she overhears a Hero reminiscing about dead companions. She wonders, with a kind of irrationality that's governed her since her childhood, if there's an infinite number of lives in the universe at any given time. A number balanced by births and deaths across the various worlds. And if there is, who's to say one of her lives wasn't responsible for a companion's death? In resurrection, how many lives had she hoarded for herself? Certainly, they weren't all hers to begin with--everyone is born with but one life, and she is much too undeserving to be born with multiple. Still, what is that saying the Summoner always says? A cat has five lives? No, that isn't it. A cat has nine lives? That's it. If her mother were still alive, Eir thinks she would ask her if that were true. 

She knows her mother would scoff, probably tell her off for believing an old wives' tale, and ignore her until she left--maybe kill her for her naivete, if she was having a particularly bad day. But there was a time--before the eyes of her mother turned dull with dissatisfaction, before she had been made a sacrifice--when her mother would have smiled at her, feigned deep thought, and humored her, conceding that yes, the four-legged felines did, in fact, have nine lives. 

The fantasy makes her eyes swell, and now her vision is blurring. Something slides down her cheek, and she hears shaky breathing. Eir turns her head and looks around the area, but she is alone. She hasn't cried in several lifetimes either; the sting of betrayal wanes with frequency. Has she always been this loud at it? Surely, someone will hear her. She doesn't know if she wants someone to or not. 

Grief is a private thing. It is meant to envelop, to rap you in a cocoon and isolate so that you and who or what you lost are alone. A final moment to acknowledge each other, embrace, and make peace. Grief is personal, and different for every person. It is not meant to be shared or belittled. Still, its weight threatens to drag her to the bottom of the ocean, leave her beneath kilometres of water pressing in on her, squeezing her ribs and puncturing her lungs. All alone, she might let it.

For it is much too easy to mourn what she lost, what was taken from her, what's missing now. 

She mourns her mother of the far past, who nurtured and cared for her. She mourns the mother of the near past, who murdered and abused her, who demanded fealty, who would sooner greet her with a stab than a smile. She mourns the lives she could have granted others, had she never died in the first place. The lives she'd held within her for minutes at a time. She mourns the feeling of not feeling. The soberness that saved her all this turmoil, this regret, this dolor. 

She thinks of the disbelief in her mother's tone when she declared she still loved her, despite the lies and manipulation. Perhaps there's one thing she can do to honor her yet. There are still sounds of weapons clashing in the Training Tower. No one has noticed her absence, nor her presence. She stares into the chasm. Lightly swings her legs. Pushes off, slipping into the unknown.

**Author's Note:**

> I may add a second part, but I'm good with just this for now. I hope you liked it. Have a nice day/night and thanks again for reading! See you soon


End file.
